Daily Times Archive: Details of the 1958 Wilink commission minority report
Two years before Nigeria’s independence, the colonial authorities set up a Wilink commission to look into the agitation of minorities in Nigeria who wanted a constitutional safeguard against the domineering ethnic groups. Their concern was that as Independence became imminent, they ran the risk of being neglected by the coming ethnic powers. There fear were well founded.
Nigeria’s political history in the 1950s had a nationalistic outlook but was actually more of ethnic championing. The Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa were already well position to receive the baton of leadership from the British colonialist. To protect their own interest, the minorities called for a protection of their rights in the constitution through the creation of states.
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The Sir Henry Wilink Commission began deliberation on 23rd of November 1957 and ended on 12th of June 1958.
The Daily Times newspaper of August 19, 1958 details the minority report of the commissions.
Below are the recommendations made by the commission:
The Willink Commission stated that to set up a separate state in each of the three regions “would create problems as great as those it sought to cure.”
It also recommends that there should be no change in the boundary between northern and western Nigeria except as a result of a plebiscite, which should be held if there is general agreement at the London constitutional conference that it should be held and that it should be binding.
The commission also recommends that “there should be one strong police force, which, though acknowledging a dual responsibility to the federal government and
The regional governments, should be under the direct control of the federal government only.”
It also recommends that there should be provision in the constitution for the Niger Delta area to be made a special area where a board would be set up to initiate schemes to supplement the normal developments of the area.
It also recommends that the Edo-speaking districts of western Nigeria and Calabar in eastern Nigeria should be designated “minority areas” and that there should be a council for Edo affairs and a Calabar council.
And the commission recommends that a number of fundamental rights should be embodied in the Nigerian constitution.
